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The weekend weather

NASAThis Perseid fireball was photographed last August 12 by Pierre Martin of Arnprior, Ontario, Canada.

Gosh, but we love it when the media finds experts to say exactly what we've been saying for a long time now. It makes us look absolutely genius-like! We draw your attention to this article from the Associated Press asking if Wednesday's deluge was due to global warming. It's not --- it's impossible to take one single weather event and slap the global-warming tag on it. But, well, read the article. We couldn't agree with it more.

Another little aside on this issue --- Central Park needs just 6.68 more inches of precipitation before this year is out to reach its yearly precip average. Given that it's only August, that seems automatic. In fact, at the rate we're going 2007 could go in the books as one of our wettest years ever. We'd have no problem attaching the global-warming tag to that.

A flash flood watch has been issued for this morning as we're once again looking at a storm setup much like Wednesday morning's. We could see at least an inch of rain before noon today, and the radar is indeed all lit up as we write. But we're not terribly concerned. For one, humidity levels are significantly lower now than they were Wednesday, meaning the convective potential is lower. But we should start off this day on the wet side.

And the cool side. Unless the sun really breaks through in the afternoon the temperature will likely climb no higher than 75 or so. And the forecast low temp for Saturday morning is all the way down to 61, a little reminder that this summer won't last forever.

The weekend looks beautiful, especially Saturday, when we'll see partly cloudy skies and a comfortable high temp of just 80. We'll warm up to 88 on Sunday under skies that will clear out to mostly sunny.

Conditions should be ideal, therefore, for gazing at the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks Sunday night-Monday morning, although it's already started. This is traditionally one of the best meteor showers of the year. You'll need to find a dark locale that's low on light pollution, of course, but the moon will be new, which will help. You can read more about the Perseids --- including where exactly to look for them --- in this comprehensive article.

Yesterday's extreme temperatures in the contiguous United States --- High: 114 at Death Valley, Calif.; Low: 32 at Stanley, Idaho.